Introduction
For the last few weeks we have been proclaiming in our service that Jesus is risen from the dead. This proclamation is the heart of our Christian faith and is the Easter Gospel. As you can imagine it was the Risen Jesus who gave the disciples their commission to go and baptise all nations and the earliest statements of faith in the Church upheld the idea that Jesus rose from the dead and that we too would be raised. This idea is in the creeds we use in worship "We believe in the resurrection of the body". This statement of faith comes from today's rather lengthy reading. Because of the length of the reading, we are going to divide it up today.
Jesus' Resurrection and ours (15: 1-11)
Paul's letter to the church in Corinth was a letter of correction because of various problems, rows and heresies that the church had fallen into. Paul was the overseer, or apostle, for this congregation and he knew it was his responsibility to urge the Christians there to return to a more orthodox view of their faith.
The church in Corinth were not denying the resurrection of Jesus, but the general resurrection of the dead. Paul was trying to point out that you can't take away one of these ideas without taking away the other. Many people now fall into the same mistake, we can believe in the resurrection of Jesus but have a hard time affirming, with Job, that "at the last I shall stand and see God in my flesh."
People in the Early Church came with two cultural backgrounds; Jewish and Gentile. Just as today, we bring our cultural baggage to worship and to our thoughts about God, so did our forebears in the faith.
Many Jewish thinkers denied that the dead would be raised to life on the Day of Judgement. The Old Testament does not contain a lot of hope that anything much happens after death. In the Old Testament we are taught that the dead go to a place called "Sheol" which is often, wrongly, translated as "Hell." This was the abode of the dead, a place of shadows where people were cut off from the living and from God. Many parts of the Old Testament reflect this grey bleak future:
"The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence" Ps 115:17
But there are a few glimpses in the Old Testament of a more hopeful future for humanity. Job holds that when he dies he will "in the flesh" see God. Gradually the Jewish people came to feel that there was a life after this one where God would redress the balance of injustice in this world.
The Gentile world, however, had a rather different view of what happened when we die. The Greeks believed that the soul, or spiritual side of us, would live on but they held that the body was a mere shell from which we would be freed at death. It is this view that most people think of now when they consider Christian teaching about Heaven. But the Church asserts not that our souls go to be in Heaven, but that we, too, shall be raised on the Last Day and we shall see God in our flesh. This is the message of today's passage.
Paul asserted that both our souls and bodies live on after our death. The body is not evil, as the Greeks believed, because Jesus came and took on a body. To the Christian, therefore, the life to come involves both our bodies and our souls.
The first thing Paul does in this section, then, is to assert the resurrection of Jesus, not as some ghost or phantom, but as the person Jesus who the disciples knew and recognised. Then he goes on to attack those who say that the resurrection of the dead will not happen.
If Jesus was not raised..... (15: 12-19)
Here Paul directly attacks those who are his opponents in the church at Corinth. In response to those who have been teaching that the "dead are not raised" he says "If you take that position it means that Jesus is not risen again, and if that be so, the whole Christian faith is wrecked."
For St Paul the resurrection of Jesus was central to his faith for four reasons.
The resurrection of Jesus proves that truth is stronger than lies. Jesus came with the true idea of God and holiness - he says in St John's gospel that people kill him because he bears witness to the truth. His death was procured because his enemies did not want their false view of God undermined. If Jesus' enemies had succeeded in killing him the lie would have won, but God raised Jesus from the dead, vindicating him.
The resurrection of Jesus proves that good is stronger than evil. The forces that crucified Jesus were the forces of evil and for a while, on late Good Friday, it seems like the devil and his angels have won in having Jesus killed and taken to Sheol - that place of death and destruction. Yet God rose Jesus from the dead and Satan was defeated.
The resurrection of Jesus proves that love is stronger than hate. Those who railed against Jesus hurled hatred and abuse at him. The nails were driven into his body by hatred. If there was no resurrection it means that the hatred in our race would have won.
The resurrection of Jesus proves that life is stronger than death. If Jesus had not been risen then it would have proved that, indeed, death could take everything in its path.
Paul insisted that if the resurrection of Jesus was not a fact then the whole Christian message was based on a lie and that those who had died believing it had died believing a delusion. Take away the resurrection and you take away the heart of the Christian faith. But the resurrection of Jesus is not the end, holds Paul, he goes on to talk about Jesus being the first-fruits of a great harvest of risen people.
The First Fruits of Those Who Sleep (20-28)
This is a difficult passage as we are not familiar with the imagery that Paul used. In the Jewish faith in the New Testament times, at harvest time farmers had to cut some corn and take it to the temple. The corn was milled into flour which was given to God. Until this "first fruit" had been offered to God the harvest could not go ahead. In the same way Jesus is the first-fruit of those who are going to be raised from the dead.
Then Paul goes on to use the creation story in Genesis to make his point. In this story Adam disobeyed God and sinned. The penalty of this sin was the loss of immortality and Adam was thrown out of the paradise of the Garden of Eden. Death was the direct consequence of Adam's sin. The Jewish people believe that in Adam all people have sinned. Therefore, Paul contrasts Adam with Jesus - the one who does not sin and so does not suffer mortality.
The last part of the passage reads rather strangely to us as we are used to thinking of Jesus and God the Father being co-equal. Paul is using picture language as we can only use human terms and analogies. God gave Jesus a task to do. That task was to defeat sin and to vanquish death and to liberate humanity. The day will come when that task will be fully and finally accomplished, and then, to think of the ting in pictorial terms, the Son will return to the Father like a victor coming home, and the triumph of God will be complete. It is not a case of the Son being subject to the Father as a slave or even a servant is to a master. It is a case of one who has accomplished the work that has given him to do, and who returns with the glory of completed obedience as his crown. As God sent forth his Son to redeem the world so in the end God will receive back a world redeemed, and there will be nothing in heaven or in earth outside the love and the power of God.
Paul continues his writing by wondering what if there is no resurrection.
If There Is No Resurection..... (29-34)
An idea had crept into the church in Corinth that you could be baptised on behalf of those who had died. St. Paul would have objected strongly to such a superstitious practice - as faith is needed to be saved, not a simple ceremony but at the moment he has bigger fish to fry.
Paul then goes back to his main theme, the resurrection of the dead. Why should a Christian, he asks, accept the battle and the danger and the perils of the Christian life at all if it is all for nothing? To say there is no resurrection is not a sign of theological sophistication, but a sign of ignorance. Interestingly there is nothing new under the sun. Many theologians both within and without the Church deny the resurrection of Jesus and even some Bishops have decided to deny this central aspect of the Christian faith. Paul would call these people, despite their learning, as being ignorant of the things of God.
Paul then starts to write about the resurrection of everyone else
The Physical and the Spiritual
One of the problems of this passage is that Paul is talking about something we know nothing about. He is talking not in the realm of knowledge but of faith and as we know, as soon as we start to try to explain mysteries of faith we can get ourselves very confused by the language and ideas we are trying to deal with. Paul is trying to speak to those who are prepared to believe that we too will be raised but who want to know what that resurrection will be like. They want to know what the resurrection bodies will be like - after all the disciples often didn't recognise the resurrected Jesus so it may be that our bodies too will be different in some way.
Paul uses the example of a seed, as did Jesus. The seed is planted and dies but then gives birth to a very different organism. The new life, or plant, sprung from the seed but is very different from the thing from which it came. Despite the difference between the plant and the seed, it is the same life, the same essence that is present in both. So for Paul our earthly bodies will be buried, like a seed, and will be dissolved, but from them will spring new life on the Last Day when God raises us up again. The form in which we rise may be very different from what was buried, but the fact remains it is the same person who is raised. We may be dissolved by death; we may be changed by resurrection but it is still we who exist.
Paul says that God gives different types of bodies, or flesh, to different aspects of creation, bodies which are fitted for their purpose. God gave dogs an incredible sense of smell and a total disregard for things which we think smell disgusting - this helps the dog fulfil one of its functions - foraging for food. God will give us a resurrection body suited for our new purpose in the life to come.
Paul is not able to describe what our new bodies will be like. He talks in general themes; our present bodies are corruptible, our new ones will be in corruptible. Our present bodies can lead to dishonour - through our behaviour, our new ones will lead only to glory. Our present bodies are beset by weakness - a difficult message for many in our community to deal with - but over time we will all be overtaken by the physical limitations of our bodies, our new bodies will not have these limitations. Finally Paul says our present bodies are physical ones, but the new ones will be able to deal with the spiritual worship of God that now we struggle with.
Finally, Paul talks about the final conquest of death, the central theme of Easter.
The Conquest of Death (50-58)
Paul continues his theme of our new bodies. As we are we are not able to fully inherit the Kingdom of God, we may be well enough equipped to get on with the life of this world, but for the life of the world to come we will not do. Before we can enter that new life we will be changed.
Finally Paul deals with the fear of death - the resurrection of Jesus leads to our own resurrection. We need not fear, death has lost its sting. When we die it will be like falling asleep and when we wake, outside all limitations of time and space we shall be raised to glory to live in the new life where there will be no more tears, nor crying nor pain - just Paradise restored.
Conclusion
We assert every week that we believe not only in the resurrection of Jesus from the grave but that we too will be raised on the Last Day. Our bodies are not mere shells where the soul lives, but an intrinsic part of ourselves. We will be raised, soul and new body. We do not know what this new body will be like, save that it will be suited to the purpose God has for us. God has two general purposes for every human - to know, love and serve God in this world (and for this our present bodies are designed) and to be happy with God forever in the next world (and for this purpose our new bodies are being designed.) So every time we say the creed, every time we think about the message of Easter, remember we too will be raised. We the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised up incorruptible and we shall be changed.
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.